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New Delhi, Oct 17 (IANS) As the Election Commission prepares the ground for a special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, political parties in the state are giving their own spin to the process, where assembly elections are likely to be held around March-April next year.
Like Bihar, the allegations include removing names of specific voters, targeting minorities and other intentions.
No significant red flags have been raised in Bihar since the draft voter list was shared by the election body more than a fortnight ago.
Now, in West Bengal, leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) have raised similar concerns, alleging “backdoor entry for the National Register of Citizens (NRC)”, and even threatening to let “rivers of blood” flow in the state in retaliation.
The verbal attacks are being seen as a reaction to Union Minister Shantanu Thakur’s recent statement that around 1.2 crore “illegal voters” could be removed from the state voter list through SIR.
Union Minister Thakur Thakur, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Bangaon Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal, belongs to the Matua community.
Spread across the regions of West Bengal and Bangladesh, this community is part of the Scheduled Caste group.
Millions of Matuas have fled religious persecution to India before and after the 1971 war that created Bangladesh.
In 2019, Union minister Shantanu Thakur defeated his aunt Mamata Thakur, who now represents the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha.
The minister was stressing on the fact that thorough scrutiny, including knocking on doors for verification and vetting, is bound to identify fake voters as well as those who are dead or brought back.
Meanwhile, BJP leader Arjun Singh has written to the Election Commission about a Pakistani national from Karachi being a voter in Naihati assembly constituency of North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.
According to reports, local TMC MLA Sanat Dey has admitted that the woman, Saleha Khatoon alias Saleha Imran, is actually from Pakistan.
Saleha’s husband, Mohammad Imran, also admitted that his wife from Karachi is a Pakistani citizen, yet a registered voter in India.
Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate had launched an investigation to identify the origin of the documents on the basis of which a Pakistani national named Azad Malik had obtained the EPIC card.
It was found that he had voted once in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections and again in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
It is no secret that the electoral politics of the state is shaped by a large religious minority of voters concentrated in its border districts and some urban areas.
Political parties assess strategy, candidate selection, local alliances and welfare messaging to secure this vote bank as results come down to relatively narrow margins in many constituencies where minority voters are decisive.
TMC has built a durable majority through populist welfare schemes, local leadership networks and deliberate outreach to Muslim communities in the state.
The Left Front was also known to use local influence, where structural issues and plans were designed to influence minority-dominated constituencies.
The number of Muslim voters in West Bengal is more than 30 percent.
Minority voters are geographically concentrated in several constituencies near the Bangladesh border, especially in Murshidabad, Malda, North Dinajpur, Nadia and other districts, where demographically the Muslim population is between 50 and 70 percent.
For example, in Malda district, the number of Muslims was recorded at over 51 percent in the last census of India conducted in 2011, which is now estimated to be around 69 percent.
Violence broke out in Murshidabad district in April this year following protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025.
The gathering of protesters soon turned violent, vandalizing and setting houses on fire, leading to unrest where many Hindu families were forced to vacate their homes.
The BJP seeks to erode the minority solidarity behind the TMC by combining growth stories with aggressive identity politics in other constituencies of the electorate, while the Left-Congress alliance seeks to position itself as a secular alternative appealing to both minority and non-minority voters.
–IANS
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